POEM

 

The Beginning of Wisdom

 

You have brought me so far.

I know so much. Names, verbs, images. My mind
overflows, a drawer that can't close.

Unscathed among the tortured. Ignorant parchment
uninscribed, light strokes only, where a scribe
tried out a pen.

I am so small, a speck of dust
moving across the huge world. The world
a speck of dust in the universe.

Are you holding
the universe? You hold
onto my smallness. How do you grasp it,
how does it not
slip away?

I know so little.

You have brought me so far.

 

Denise Levertov (1923–1997)